


Laundry Day

by Linguini



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Domestic, Ficlet, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 11:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/886799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linguini/pseuds/Linguini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a "Laundry Day" prompt from Random_Nexus.  Douglas, Emily, and a honey-do list.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Laundry Day

t’s late July, on one of those kinds of days that’s become Douglas’s favorite.  Miriam’s scheduled to be gone until early evening and has left him with a list of things to do before she gets home.  It’s not long, just things they’ve been meaning to do for a while, and he and Emily blow through it pretty quickly. Not that he minds the list, for an excuse to spend the day alone with this daughter.

 

They’ve finished all but the last item, and he’s just putting the last of the groceries away when Emily comes racing in, sliding across the linoleum on her socks.  

“Look, Daddy,” she says.  “Is it good?”  

Douglas looks over his shoulder to where she’s standing for inspection, a pair of holey jeans and a t-shirt already spackled with paint.  Her socks are mismatched and she’s managed to wrap one of Miriam’s silk scarves over her hair to protect it from paint.

“You look absolutely ravishing, darling,” he tells her, not quite able to keep the fond smile off his lips.  “But I don’t think your mother would appreciate you using one of her good scarves like that.”  He unwraps it gently and sets it aside.  “Now, have you gathered all our supplies?”

“Yup,” she chirps.  “Paint, rollers, paint tray, plastic sheet, brushes, tape, and Jaffa cakes.”

“Jaffa cakes?” he asks.

“For when we get hungry,” she tells him, very seriously.

“Ah, yes.  I see.  How did I not think of them?  It’s a good thing you’re the foreman.”

Emily’s eyebrows scrunch together.  “How come I’m the foreman and not the forewoman?”

Douglas grins at her.  “You can be the forewoman, if you like.”

“Good,” she says.  “Then you can be the foreman.”

Douglas throws off a jaunty salute.  “Yes, ma’am,” he says.  “What shall we do first?”

She ponders the items in front of her.  “Taping?”

“Good choice.  Now, since we’re only doing the one wall, we don’t need a lot of tape.  Just around the skirting board and the door, yeah?”

“I can do it!”  And she’s off like a shot.  Douglas leaves her to it, stirring the paint.  The shade of green Miriam’s chosen reminds him every bit of a sanitorium, and not at all of a sitting room.  But, as part of one of the long-since-adjudicated agreements in their relationship, she’s in charge of decorating schemes—he’s merely the financier and executor of her will.

While he works, he watches Emily taping, smiling softly to himself when her tongue peeks out from between her teeth, a sign of deep concentration.  Not that it helps her, as the tape is decidedly wonky anyway.  Once the paint is ready, he comes to help, taping the sides and top of the door quite easily.  He pretends to be unsure of his work, though, for the chance to set her on his shoulders to do a “quality check.”  She judges it “adequate,” which is not a word he thinks a five-year-old should know, let alone use on their father.  The disagreement turns into an impromptu tickle fight until he lies spread out on the floor, gasping for mercy.

“Alright, layabout,” she tells him sternly, standing with a foot on either side of his neck.  “Come on, we haven’t all day.”  
  
“Layabout?” he says with mild affront.  “Would a layabout do… _this?”_  He surges up, snagging her around the waist and standing in one fluid motion, flipping her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“Let me down,” she protests between giggles.  “I want to help!”

“Oh, _now_ you want to help?” he asks.  “Mmhmm.  I see.  Well, then.”  He flips her over and sets her gently on her feet.  “Alright, Madame Forewoman.  Small brush.  Hop to.”  She rushes to obey, and he sets about showing her how to paint around the fixtures carefully, cleaning them as she goes.  Once she’s solidly engrossed in her tasks, he starts on the rest of the wall, cutting in and then doing the body of the wall with the ease borne of long practice.  

Between the two of them, it doesn’t take long for the wall to be finished and the supplies put away.  Douglas turns from setting the last of the brushes to dry to assess her cleanliness.  “Not bad,” he tells her, thumbing a bit of paint off her cheek.  “Not clean, but not bad.  But I think a bath is in order.”  He scoops her up and carries her up the stairs, setting her down in the bathroom.  “Strip and get in,” he instructs as he sets the bathwater running.

After a quick scrub-down, he starts on her hair, laughing when she spits water into the air as she surfaces, “like a whale, Daddy.”  

“Alright, Moby Emily.  Head forward and close your eyes.”  With a gentle hand, he massages the shampoo into her hair, then cups his hand under her fringe and fills the plastic beaker from the side of the tub with water.  “Rinse now, you ready?”  He waits until her shoulders unhunch from around her ears and she gives the tiniest of nods before he pours it over her hair.  Emily’s clamped her hands over her ears for protection and has her eyes squeezed as tightly as they’ll go.  

When he’s finished, he rests his broad hand on her back and rubs soothingly.  “All done, love.  You can surface now.”  As she stands up, he wraps her in a towel, tucking the end in securely and sends her to get dressed, heading for a shower of his own.

By the time he’s made it out, dressed and still slightly damp, Emily has bundled their paint-covered clothes into the washer and is stood there in deep thought, evidently trying to work out the controls.

“I can’t figure it out,” she tells him, matter-of-factly.  “I don’t know the words.”

He smiles and crouches beside her.  “Well, this one says whites, and this one colors.  The one that starts with a D is for delicates.  Which do you think we should use?”

She ponders for a minute.  “Well, your shirt was red, and mine was blue.  And both of our trousers were blue, too.  But your shirt had some white and your socks are white.  Can’t you pick both?  Do the color one then the white one?”

“You can,” Douglas says, “but the reason you do them apart is because the colors sometimes turn the whites not-white.  Luckily, I happen to know that these clothes are magical and won’t do that, so you can put them on the color cycle.”  He watches as she struggles with the selector for a minute, but she eventually manages.  “Now, before you pull it out, how much soap did you put in?”

She turns to him with wide eyes.  “I have to put _soap_ in?”

He bites off his grin.  “Yes, it’s right there.  But, you shouldn’t do it without your mother or me around, alright?  If you put too much, you might break the machine.”  

Emily nods, looking very serious.  “How much do I put in?”

“This much,” he says measuring it out and letting her put it in.

She starts the washer and they stand there watching for a bit before she latches onto his arm and declares she’s bored.

“Well, we’ve finished our honey-do list for the day,” he says.  “How about a puzzle?”

With a joyous shout, she runs to her room, returning with an unopened dinosaur puzzle.  They spend the time waiting for the machine to stop putting it together, though they only manage to get half of the edge done by the time the washer stops.  Douglas sends Emily for a basket, then stoops to let her climb on his shoulders.  She manages to put the clothes out on the line with only the minimum of help from him to hold them, then uses her vantage point to spur him on a mock steeplechase around the garden.  “Faster,” she shouts, laughing and clinging to him until the afternoon heat saps their energy and they’re forced to lie on the grass under the shade of the tree.

Douglas throws his arm over his eyes to block out the sun, and so it unprepared for the thump of her head on his stomach.  They lie there in silence for a while, the hum of bees and the neighbor’s trickling fountain the only sounds.

“Daddy,” Emily says eventually, excitement in her voice.  “That cloud looks like a plane!”

Douglas blinks his eyes open and looks where she’s pointing.  “Hmm.  I think you’re right.  Or a whale.”

She points to another.  “And that one’s a crab.”

He’s not as certain, but is willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.  With a hum, he finds another.  “That one’s a dragon with an egg.”  She laughs, delighted.

They stay there for a while until the heat becomes too much.  He goads her inside with the promise of an ice lolly, and they return to the puzzle.  Once they reach a stopping point, Douglas takes her back outside, riding on his back again, and they take the washing off the line.  The clothes are warm and smell good, and Emily insists they make a nest out of them before they fold them, curling up underneath several of his work shirts.  The pleading look on her face is not one he’s ever been able to deny her, and he obliges, shaping the jeans and t-shirts into a nest of his own.

With a contented snuffle, Emily sidles closer to him, resting her arm on his chest and her hand over his heart.  And there, lulled by the heat of the washing and the rise and fall of his breathing, she drifts off.  Douglas smiles softly and lets his eyes slide shut, letting himself drift off as well.

He’s not sure what time it is when he wakes up—late enough for MIriam to have arrived home.  She strokes his cheek with her thumb, looking over the two of them with a fond smile.

“Hello,” she says, and gives him a kiss.  “Good day?”

“The best,” he says, feeling a smile cross his lips unbidden.

She raises her eyebrows at him and slides her hand up his cheek and through his fringe.  “Oh?” she asks.  “What have you two been up to?”

“Not much,” he tells her, looking down at where Emily’s leaving a wet spot on his shirt.  “Just laundry day.”  And he closes his eyes, content.


End file.
